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Does anyone have any advice on how to make homemade conductive paint to fix a cracked carbon trace in a game controller? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by over_clox@lemmy.world to c/askelectronics@discuss.tchncs.de

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It's the trace going towards the mode button, so I'm pretty sure resistance won't exactly be critical over a ~3mm gap, as long as it recognizes when the plunger button is pressed down.

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[–] isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

crush up some graphite really finely in a mortar (from a good source, like the carbon rods in zinc-carbon batteries, which can be usually found as those chonky D batteries if you dont need the large rods the video shows, or soft pencil leads, as the hard ones contain clay, and also be prepared to spend a lot if you go the pencil lead route), mix with glue, play with ratios (the more graphite the better, but it might start cracking with too much graphite) and type of glue (elmers, superglue, epoxy, try to aim for something slightly flexible as tou mentioned it's gonna be under stress)

but i'll warn you that it's gonna work kinda bad compared to finding where the carbon trace originates and soldering a wire there (there's gotta be metal somewhere)

[–] over_clox@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Those all sound like a good set of options indeed. I'm kinda hoping to be able to use silicone glue, but any which way, I'll be testing on sample cards first before applying anything to the board.

Unfortunately, even if I find the metal trace it connects to, the very end of the carbon trace is a dead end, it functions as one side of the rubber plunger button contact pad. So the fix has to be carbon trace friendly, soldering simply isn't an option here.

Thanks for the thoughts and advice 👍